Ghana finance minister denied service, Oct. 10, 1957

On this day in 1957, a waitress at a Howard Johnson restaurant in Dover, Del., refused to seat Komla Gbedemah, the finance minister of the newly formed nation of Ghana in sub-Saharan Africa. After reporters learned of the incident, President Dwight Eisenhower apologized to Gbedemah and invited him to breakfast at the White House.

The incident began when Gbedemah and his secretary, both dressed in business suits, pulled up to the Howard Johnson as night fell and went up to the counter. They each ordered a glass of orange juice for 30 cents apiece. As they were handed the juice in containers, wrapped for them to carry outside, the waitress told them that they could not sit inside the restaurant because “colored people are not allowed to eat in here.”

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Gbedemah protested to the manager and showed him a card that identified him as the finance minister of Ghana, the first nation in West Africa to gain its independence from Britain. Gbedemah reportedly told the manager: “The [white] people here are of a lower social status than I am but they can drink here and we can’t. You can keep the orange juice and the change [from a dollar bill], but this is not the last you have heard of this.”

It was one of the first of many such incidents in which African diplomats faced racial segregation in the United States. The slights troubled some U.S. officials because Washington and Moscow were competing for African “hearts and minds” during the Cold War.

At the White House breakfast, Eisenhower and Gbedemah discussed Ghana’s plan to build the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River. The United States subsequently shifted its stance and financed the project. That Howard Johnson’s restaurant changed its policy to serve whoever walked in the door.